Rosewood Hotels Aims to Double Luxury Footprint This Decade

25.08.2023 - 14:31 / skift.com / Sean Oneill

The formula for luxury hotels has typically had two key ingredients. First, choose locations in the districts where the elite live. Second, focus on high-touch services encouraging guests to linger, and spend, at the property.

But Rosewood Hotels & Resorts has taken somewhat alternative approaches when it created the 30 luxury hotels it operates today — and as it builds the 25 luxury hotels it has in the pipeline. Its strategy responds to shifts in consumer tastes.

“Today’s client is looking for an immersive, stand-out experience,” said Radha Arora, president and co-chief development officer. “Gone are the days when you go and build right smack in the middle of the obvious epicenter of fashion, shopping, or nightlife.”

To be sure, Rosewood Hotel Group does broadly target major tourist destinations. Next year, the brand plans to open Rosewood Munich, the brand’s first property in Germany, and Rosewood Schloss Fuschl, the group’s second property in Austria. In 2024, Rosewood Rome aims to debut. In 2025, Rosewood Milan and Rosewood Hotel Bauer near Venice are slated to open. The company also intends to expand in Asia, with nine announced openings, and in Latin America, where it debuted Rosewood São Paulo this year. It’s also growing a branded residential offering worldwide.

But the difference is in the nuance. The conventional wisdom in building luxury hotels has been to go to the traditionally most desirable neighborhoods in popular destinations because being seen by the right people is often what guests want most. Yet Rosewood often takes a contrarian approach.

When it opened in London, for example, it took on a property in “the City,” or financial district, rather than a district like Mayfair or Knightsbridge. The brand bet that its core customer, the next-generation elite, would put an especially high value on memorable experiences, which it believed the character of the building lent itself to creating.

A flamboyantly decorated, Edwardian-era insurance office was reconfigured as Rosewood London. Its central carriageway entrance is where the gates open up and traditionally glad staff welcome guests to enter through doors that look like the front door to number 10 Downing Street.

“Creating the sense you’re arriving into a manor or estate in an intimate way like we did there isn’t possible to do elsewhere in central London,” Arora said.

As money earmarked to chase high-end real estate assets expands, targets can become elusive. Part of the Rosewood formula has been finding properties away from tourist epicenters that can be converted in a lightweight way and can drive high average daily rates under the Rosewood brand.

A case in point: Creating Rosewood Castiglion del Bosco involved transforming a